Nothing to Fear
by aBlackBird
Summary: You have to be tough to survive the zombie apocalypse, but what about average every day fears? Like bees and spiders? Everyone has something they are afraid of..
1. buzz buzz

1\. Shane, bees/flying insects with stingers 

* * *

His mama had been real allergic to anything that could fly and had a stinger. Almost died a couple of times, according to his pa, when they had been sweethearts and sneaking off to the woods to kiss and fool around. Honey bees, bumblebees, yellow jackets, hornets; Shane's mama was allergic to all of them. And since it ran in the family, Shane had been raised to always run away from the buzzing sound of what might be his imminent death.

Growing up, Rick had thought it was hilarious, Shane's fear of the bees. When they went camping, it was the funniest thing Rick could witness, just sneaking up behind his friend and imitating a buzzing noise. Then during high school, the first day of football camp a month before their junior year started, a junior coach had pointed out that a hive had formed at the T on one of the goal posts, and another boy had thought it was a great idea to poke it with a stick. When the swarm came out, Shane took off for his truck and locked himself inside, shaking and refusing to come out. Rick (who had suffered a few stings, but nothing major) had laughed at first, then sat in the bed of the truck so he could talk to Shane through the back window (which was closed, but thinner than the other windows) to calm him down. It took two hours, and the confirmation that the football field was bee and hive free before Shane agreed to come out. Rick hadn't made fun of him for it since.

Being in the woods made Shane nervous; not because of the walkers, but because he knows some hornets like to make their nests in the ground. Being at the farm was nice enough; they were out of the woods and Rick had checked where they made camp for anything that buzzed before he let them put up their tents. Searching for Sophia made him anxious, though; it'd been too long since she'd been last seen, and tromping through the brush made him hyper-aware of any noises.

Shane was doing a perimeter check with T-Dog when a lone walker came out of the treeline. They were far enough away from the farmhouse that even if Hershel had binoculars he wouldn't see them take out just one walker, so Shane picked up a fallen branch that seemed sturdy enough and thwacked it over the head. Easy pickings, the walker's skull caved in and it fell to its knees, then face-up onto the ground.

"Nice hit, man," T-Dog nodded approvingly. "I call the next one."

"Alright," Shane handed over the branch. That's when he heard it; the buzzing. "You hear that?"

"Sounds like bees," T-Dog peered into the treeline. "I don't see a hive, do you?" The buzzing grew louder. "I see a walker, though, and...it's waving?"

A second walker burst from the treeline, flailing it's arms...one of which had a beehive stuck on the end of it and an angry swarm attacking it's head.

"Okay, I'm going in," T-Dog spared a glance at Shane, then blinked. "You okay man? Shane?"

"B-b-b," Shane stuttered as he started to shake, "BEES!"

"Oh hell naw," T-Dog huffed as he watched Shane run away from the bees. He turned back to the walker and dispatched it, running away himself so the bees wouldn't sting him either. He caught up to Shane, who had stopped running and was panting and shaking. "What the hell Shane? Resident badass motherfucker, but scared of bees? I don't get it, man. We've all been livin' in the woods after the motherfuckin' apocalypse, you just took out a member of the walking dead, and you're still scared of bees?!"

"Family allergy; my ma was real allergic to bees, hornets, yellow jackets," Shane panted, still shaking a bit. "Been runnin' away from the little flying bastards my whole life. You kill that walker?"

"Yeah, and thanks for sticking around to watch my back," T-Dog frowned. "Come on, we still gotta check the rest of the perimeter."

"You...aren't gonna say nothin' about this back at camp, are you?"

"How can we? You know how Hershel feels about the walkers; anything we say in camp is gonna get to him eventually, and I don't need an old white dude cluckin' his tongue at me while he judges us for thinkin' walkers ain't people."

"...Thanks, man."

"Though it was awful funny to watch you run away from that walker like your ass was on fire."

"Oh shut up."

* * *

Each chapter will be a different character. Enjoy!


	2. sleep tight

_Andrea, bedbugs_

* * *

It's stupid, and Andrea knows it's stupid.

"Sleep tight, and don't let the bedbugs bite," her mother had told her fondly as a kid.

That saying had kept her up for hours, terrified that sometime, in the middle of the night, bugs living inside of her bed were going to eat her alive while she slept. It got worse when she went to the school library one day and looked up what bedbugs were and what they could do; she refused to sleep in her bed for a week after that, and her mom quit wishing her goodnight that way.

Now, of course, there are worse things trying to bite her, trying to eat her, but she's got a gun for the walkers...bedbugs, on the other hand, are a mite too small to shoot at (plus it would waste valuable ammunition).

So when they leave the farm and find a nice, moderately-sized motel mostly free of walkers, Andrea takes a room for herself and does what she's always done before sleeping in a bed that isn't hers: she checks for signs of bedbugs. When she finds no trace, she grabs clean sheets and makes the bed.

At night, when everybody settles down (save for Glenn, who took the first watch), Andrea goes to bed and tries not to imagine the sound of tiny insects inside the mattress, trying to get to her before the walkers do. Most nights, she succeeds; tonight, she doesn't.

She decides keeping Glenn company is better than feeling like she needs to take a shower to get the bugs off of her all night.


	3. here kitty kitty

Dale, cats

* * *

Dale is not allergic to cats, but he is terrified of them. It's not one of the things he publicizes, given that there are more pressing matters at hand, and the cat population seems to have gone drastically down due to the walkers surviving on anything living.

His aunt had lived next door when he was small, and his mother would always take him over during the summers when he was too young to run around the neighborhood by himself or with his friends. She and her sister would sit on the front porch drinking sweet tea and playing Scrabble. His aunt would tell him to go play nice with her kitties.

Only her kitties weren't nice; they were sent straight from Lucifer himself to torment him. Scratches and bites would pepper his arms and legs by the end of the summer, and his mother never believed him when he said all he tried to do was pet the cats, and that they hated him.

Dale has tried to get over his fear a couple of times, but despite wanting to make friends with at least one feline, they all seem to dislike him from the start. Dogs, on the other hand, would go out of their way to say hi to him and get a pat on the head. Dale likes that just fine, knowing that not all animals hate him on sight.

A month after leaving the farm, Dale is keeping watch while the others are asleep, and all is quiet. Andrea climbs up for a change of guard when it happens. He hears a rustling noise in the bushes, and it doesn't sound like a walker, but there aren't many creatures that are out and about at two in the morning that would come near a small camp fire.

When the cat slinks out of the brush, sniffing the air and looking around, Andrea lets out a little "awww, kitty".

Dale tries to remember how to breathe and not shriek like a frightened child. He also has to remember that ammunition is limited and shooting the cat is out of the question, which is why he slowly lowers his rifle that had automatically trained on the shaking brush.

"Dale?" Andrea is looking at him, perplexed. "It's just a cat, what's wrong with you? You allergic?"

Dale does something he's never done before in Andrea's presence: he lies through his teeth and doesn't regret it for a second.

"Deathly allergic; hair, dander, spit, I can't have it anywhere near me or my throat closes up. Shoo it away, would you?" He gives her the big, pleading puppy eyes that nobody realizes he knows he's good at, and rejoices internally when she clambers off the RV to remove the hellion from camp.

He may be the oldest among them, but that didn't mean he can't act childish every once in a while. With that in mind, he sticks his tongue out at the cat when it runs away from Andrea and back into the woods.


	4. clowning around

Daryl, clowns

* * *

Daryl blames his fear of clowns on Merle (hell, he blames most of the things he's scared of or doesn't like on his older brother, but to be fair, Merle is an asshole and enjoyed scaring/teasing his little brother to the point of distraction). Specifically, he blames Merle for hearing about the circus coming to town before anybody, and then sitting Daryl down every night for almost two weeks right before bed to tell scary stories about a traveling troupe of clowns that murdered little boys for fun.

Daryl had only been seven at the time, and he didn't know the circus was coming until it was there, and then his ma and pa had no idea why he started screaming his fool head off when they took him to see the parade that announced the circus's arrival.

For the most part, Daryl has been able to avoid fairs, circuses and clowns; living in the middle of a forest helps with this immensely. If it wasn't for the walkers taking over the little supply towns that kept him stocked in necessities and hunting equipment, he would have happily stayed there. As it was, he'd had to leave, and he fell in with this group of wayward city folk, most of whom had turned out to be pretty decent.

So while leaving the farm and all the heartache it represented suited Daryl just fine at the time, now that they were running low on fuel the group had stopped at the first place that might have generators and gas: a broken-down fairground, that looked like it was in full swing when the apocalypse hit. They parked a little ways off and walked in, and that's when Daryl saw it; promotions for an acrobatic clown troupe.

"You okay?" Glenn asked quietly at his side; they were both taking point as they walked down the promenade, checking makeshift side streets. Glenn kept his eyes trained on the right side of the street. "You seem tense...well, more than usual."

"Too many hiding spots," Daryl replied softly. "Plus, geeks look bad enough; I'm hopin' not to come across too many in greasepaint."

"Walker clowns?" Glenn shuddered. "Thanks for the nightmare fuel."

"You know me, Short-round; spreadin' the joy wherever I go," Daryl smirked.

Glenn snickered, then went still and held up one hand. The mid-afternoon sun helped cast shadows, and in the next side-street several seemed to shuffle from side-to-side. Glenn motioned that he would take a quick look, and Daryl covered him. When he came back, he looked pale.

"Too many over there; we need to take a side-street," Glenn grimaced. He nodded to an alley they'd passed on Daryl's side. "The bigger attractions look like they're over there; maybe we can just go around the swarm?"

Daryl nodded and motioned for the rest of the group who had been following at a distance to change their course. They got to the first ride without incident, and drained the tanks into their gas cans. Just as they had all they could carry, Daryl heard the uneven canter of walkers getting near their position. He looked around...and froze.

"Daryl?" Glenn put a tentative hand on his shoulder.

"Clowns," Daryl whispered, unable to move.

Glenn looked where Daryl was staring and cringed. Geeks in white greasepaint that had been baked onto their faces from the heat, even as their flesh was rotting; nasty. They were still a ways off, but there were a lot of them.

"Guys, we need to leave, right now," Glenn quietly told the group, then turned back to Daryl and gave his shoulder a shake. "Come on, man, snap out of it, we gotta move," he hissed lowly, which seemed to break Daryl out of his living statue routine.

"Yeah...yeah, let's go," Daryl felt shaken. When they got out of the fairgrounds and fueled their vehicles, Daryl caught Glenn before the caravan took off again. "Thanks...for back there."

"No problem; I never liked clowns either," Glenn gave him a shy smile. "If you need somebody to bunk with tonight, let me know."

"Gonna keep me from screamin' in my sleep, small round?" Daryl let a slow smile slide across his mouth.

"You'll have to invite me in to find out, hick," Glenn's smile did funny things to Daryl's insides, and the teasing lilt in his voice was just too much.

Daryl got on his bike, laughing quietly. The kid was a piece of work.


	5. needles

Glenn, fear of needles

* * *

When they were in the CDC and Jenner needed blood samples, Glenn had suffered a panic attack. He literally hyperventilated until he fainted. Jenner took the blood sample while he was out, and made the remark when Glenn came to that he was lucky, since the collapse of society made the possibility of getting shots practically nil. Glenn had nodded, pale and shaken as he left the room.

The only one who had noticed was Daryl, who seemed to be a bit more friendly to him after that. They got on well after that, especially when it came to scouting an area or taking point in a new place. Going to the circus had reinforced their good teamwork; that promenade was too big for one guy to take point, and he had been able to keep Daryl from freaking out over the clowns.

Daryl fuckin' Dixon afraid of clowns; the mind boggles. Glenn certainly wasn't a fan of them, but the look of horror on Daryl's face...that had been etched in his brain more than the geek clowns.

It had been a month since then, and the group was forced to take a long route due to congestion on all the major roads to the base. It included going through a small deserted town, and Glenn and Daryl had gone scouting for supplies. They needed fresh medical supplies, and the small clinic they happened upon didn't appear to be too ransacked in comparison to the others they had come across.

Glenn was rooting through the supply closet while Daryl, after making sure that there were no geeks inside, pillaged the dispensary. They each had a list and a duffel bag near to bursting by the time they were done, Glenn finishing first. In his haste to get back to the group, he bumped into a standing rack of supplies, which shook a few boxes that were already open off the top shelf, which in turn knocked off other things that were sticking out of the shelves nearby.

Glenn watched it all happen as if in slow-motion, a grand domino effect that couldn't take anymore than 10 seconds, but suddenly, between him and the door to freedom...needles. It didn't matter that the syringe needles had caps on them, it didn't matter that there was no way the surgery needles could poke him still in their little packets, there were needles all over the floor.

"Don't pass out, don't pass out, don't pass out," Glenn chanted to himself, death-grip on his duffel bag and forced himself to look up at the ceiling. Water stain above him, perfect, he could focus on that. "Don't pass out, don't pass out, don't pass out."

"Hey slow-boat to China, what's takin' so long?" Daryl appeared in the doorway, hoisting his duffel full of meds, a smile on his face that quickly disappeared as he took in the room. He then looked at Glenn and sighed. "Needles, huh?"

"Needles," Glenn nodded, trying not to shake, trying not to pass out.

"Look up at the ceiling, lemme go find a broom," Daryl dropped his duffel and left the doorway, coming back a minute later with a battered mop. "Best I could do on short notice. Close your eyes."

Glenn closed his eyes and flinched every time he heard the needles go skittering across the floor in their packaging.

"Okay, look at me," Daryl said softly. When Glenn complied, he smirked. "I want you to look at me and nothing else, and as I back out to the hall, you're gonna follow me, alright?"

Glenn nodded and followed Daryl out into the hallway, and then sat down against the wall heavily.

"Thanks," he finally said when he was able to talk again.

"Consider it a trade for what you did at the fair," Daryl cleared his throat and Glenn watched as he blushed, "and, you know, after." Daryl looked away, still blushing, into the room they had just vacated. "Did you get everything on the list?"

"Yeah, you?" Glenn knew evasion when he saw it.

"Yeah, plus some," Daryl was still looking at the supplies Glenn hadn't raided. "You ready?"

"Yeah," Glenn smiled shyly. As they walked down the road, Glenn decided to push his luck just a little bit. If it didn't work, fine, but he just wanted to see Daryl blush again before they were back with the group. "You know, it's not really a fair trade unless you stay with me tonight."

"Is that right?" Daryl smirked, even as he felt his face heat up again. The kid really was a piece of work.


	6. are you afraid of the dark?

Carl, inability to see/absence of light

* * *

Carl has seen some crazy stuff in his short life. The dead getting back up and moving around, hunting the living is at the top of the list. Slightly below that was the collapse of civilization as he knew it. No more computer, no more video games, no more electricity or hot water unless there was a gas-powered generator, no more artificial light unless there was a power source they could use in their traveling caravan. No more internet, no more school (except for what his mom and Carol could teach him), no more people his own age, now that Sophia was gone.

That part hurt the most; Sophia was the only other person his age that he'd seen so far that had still made it through the craziness, and now she was gone. His mom had told him not to look, but he knew, somewhere deep down, that he'd have to keep watching, even as his dad put a bullet in Sophia's head. He'd owed her that much for being his best and only friend during all of this.

He was the only kid in the group now (though Daryl teased Glenn by calling him 'kid', but Carl supposed that was like when Matty Evans had pulled on Crystal Patton's braids so she'd pay more attention to him), and while his mom and dad and Shane were hyper aware of his status as the only kid, most of the others knew he could use a gun and protect himself if need be, and that suited Carl just fine.

He had claimed a small tent for himself, arguing that his space in the big family tent was gonna be taken up soon for the baby and mom needed to get ready for it. He always pitched his tent right beside the big one, and his dad had allowed it.

The fact that he always pitched the little tent on the side closest to the fire seemed to be lost on them.

Carl had never liked the dark, but what he hated (and scared him) more was the absence of light. Without light, he couldn't see, and if he couldn't see, then he couldn't shoot the walkers that might happen upon the camp in the middle of the night when the campfire was burning low. There were walkers in the dark, waiting for him.

He wasn't going to end up like Sophia, trapped in a walker zoo. He wasn't going to end up like Ed or Amy, too surprised to fight back. He kept his gun within easy reach of his sleeping bag and had squirreled away a flashlight with extra batteries on the last supply run that Glenn had let him tag along because he needed an extra set of hands and the place had been safer than most in the middle of nowhere.

He knew they weren't safe out in the woods, running the caravan. It was meals on wheels for walkers. The base would be safe. The base would have a generator and working lights and hot water and food they wouldn't have to scavenge or hunt for to eat. The base would have army guys so he wouldn't have to sleep with his gun in easy reach and a smuggled flashlight under his pillow, twitching awake at the sound of a snapping twig.

It had occurred to him that the base could be full of army guy walkers. Carl knew that as long as they hit the base in daylight, they could clear it out and fortify themselves inside. As long as there was light, he'd be fine; the thought of a moonless night and a flashlight on the fritz was what terrified him. All of his nightmares took place in the dark.


	7. mr clean

Carol, germs/dirt

* * *

Everything needed to be clean.

Carol had scrubbed down Dale's RV when Sophia was gone; not just because she wanted it nice for Sophia, but because the inside of the RV made her skin crawl. It was a sty, and it was those kinds of places that made people sick. After learning from Jenner that the walker plague acted like meningitis, she had felt vindicated in her cleanliness. She had always kept her house spotless; even before marrying Ed and having Sophia she would keep her place tidy.

Germs and dirt were the enemy, now that society had collapsed and they were trying to get away from the walker swarms. No more real doctors to patch people up and give them the right medicines (though Hershel had been doing a fine job of keeping her people alive), now the old ways of keeping your living space clean to avoid disease had to come back to the forefront. That meant sweeping and scrubbing and making sure to wash your hands before you ate.

Watching Sophia come out of that barn, dirty and bloody from the bite wound, made into a walker, had broken something in Carol. She had taken over all the clothes washing, and went through Dale's RV to scrub it down again before moving on to the other vehicles (though Daryl had washed his motorcycle himself with her supervision, now that he was up and about). She had forcibly removed every piece of raggedy, filthy clothing that Daryl owned (under his distinct protest) and made Glenn get him new clothes on his next supply run.

She washed and scrubbed until one early morning Andrea and Shane had to bodily remove her from her station at the laundry board by picking her up and putting her in her tent.

"You need to rest, Carol," Andrea had told her softly. "You've cleaned every vehicle and all the clothes. You need to rest or you'll wear yourself out."

"But the sleeping bags still need a wash, and we haven't cleaned the inside of the tents yet, and we've been sleeping in them for months," Carol argued, trying to get up. "I cleaned my bag and tent yesterday, and the dirt was everywhere! I can only imagine what the other tents and sleeping bags look like. We'll get colds and infections and the walkers will smell it on us. I need to get back to work."

"Carol, you need to rest," Shane said from the opening of the tent, "look at your hands; they're pruned like you've been swimmin' for hours, and your knuckles are almost raw from scrubbin' everything with a surface you can reach."

"But the dirt-"

"-Will still be there when you wake up," Shane interrupted.

It was the wrong thing to say, in retrospect.

However, Andrea did take some enjoyment out of Carol practically leaping out of her tent and smacking Shane across the face in her desperation to get out and clean, screeching about how germs and dirt would be the end of them all. Shane sure as hell wasn't expecting it, judging from the look on his face as he gingerly touched the quickly-forming hand-shaped bruise.

"Daryl's tent and sleeping bag, and Carl's and T-Dog's sleeping bags are first," Carol ordered, walking back to the washing board and tub. "They've been wounded recently, they need the cleanest things. The two of you, either you stand there or you help, but don't you dare try to keep me in my tent again."

"Yes ma'am," Andrea wasn't about to argue after that display of panic and determination. "I'll go get the sleeping bags first from Carl and T-Dog; Daryl might take a bit of convincing."

"You leave that boy to me," Carol snapped. "Hop to it; we're wasting daylight."


	8. all alone

Lori, being alone

* * *

Lori was from the very beginning, a people person. Not that she would always have the best way of dealing with people, but she loved being with people. In the middle of a crowd was a great place to be, because if she was with people...well, then she wasn't alone.

Lori had an issue with being alone. As a little girl, she would cling to whatever parent was around, and if neither were around, she'd make up imaginary friends so she wouldn't feel like she was by herself. As she grew up, she amassed a vast network for friends, people she could call at a moment's notice to go out and do something with, so that she was always doing something with somebody.

Meeting Rick was great; he wanted to be around her as much as possible, and in the beginning he was warm and nice and friendly. Marrying him meant never being alone, and having Carl meant she'd be surrounded by other mothers and their kids for as long as Carl was growing up. Rick going off for crazy hours at work and slowly becoming cold to her wasn't the best situation, but she had Carl and Shane to support her after Rick was comatose, and that was just fine.

The apocalypse that killed all the people and turned them into walkers was hellish for her, because being in the middle of a crowd of...things that used to be her friends meant death. Being in too big of a group meant death too, so the bunch of people she and Carl and Shane were stuck with was the biggest group of people she was allowed to be around. At least there were people, and Carol was nice to be around, being the only other mother. Sophia was wonderful, because Carl was around somebody near his age too. Neither of them were alone.

Rick coming back was no less than a miracle, and he'd done it for her and Carl. He'd made it back, and he'd helped her make a baby (she was still refusing to acknowledge the fact that the baby might be Shane's, and she was going to keep refusing even if it had black hair and a distinctive nose), and her husband was going to make sure she was never alone again.

The swarm of walkers that separated them all had other plans.

Lori was lost in the woods by herself, playing a bizarre game of marco-polo with the rest of her group because she was unarmed and the walkers were still around hunting them.

She was alone, well and truly alone, for the first time since she was a child.

The thought scares her more than she thought possible.

The snap of a branch makes her whirl around and see a walker closing in on her, and she does the one thing she knows he can't do: she climbs the nearest tree and waits in the branches. Then she calls out her position for the world to hear, because as long as she's up here and the walkers are down there, she can't get bit and she's technically no longer alone.

Walkers used to be people, and though they can't talk, they can listen. So Lori talks to the walker as it growls and hisses at her, and soon more come and cluster around the trunk of her tree, and would you look at all the visitors? She smiles as she tells them about their demise, coming soon at the hands of her husband, and for a moment, she can see past the rotting flesh of their faces and into the people they used to be, and she doesn't feel alone at all anymore.

Rick comes with Shane and Daryl, taking out the walkers before getting her out of the tree, and when they get back to the caravan, Dale ushers her inside the RV for a cup of coffee and Rick hands her a handkerchief to wipe her face of tears.

"Did any of them get close to biting you?" Rick asks, mistaking the tears as a product of her being afraid.

"No, no; I climbed the tree before they got to me," Lori assures him. She won't tell him that she's sad he just killed all the walkers because it was like losing a bunch of new friends, and blames her pregnancy for her silly thoughts. "Is Carl okay? I want to see him."


	9. tweet tweet

T-Dog, birds

* * *

It had started out with owls when he was a kid. His parents had taken him camping, and in the middle of the night, the most unholy noise had started up near their camp.

"Daddy, what's that noise?" T-Dog had whispered.

"Ain't nothin' but a screech owl, go back to sleep."

"Are they dangerous?"

"Only if you're a mouse; screech owls are tiny. Now go back to sleep."

T-Dog was less than convinced, but the screeching stopped, and he did eventually fall back asleep. But every time he heard an owl or the screech of a predator bird after that, he got jumpy.

When the apocalypse hit and T-Dog saw all the scavenger birds eating the dead or pecking at the walkers before they could get eaten themselves, his phobia expanded and changed. If the scavenger birds were feeding that way, then they could carry the plague with them. After awhile, he was jumping at the sound of wings, regardless of what kind of birds they were.

The absolutely most humiliating freak out over birds had been just before they hit the base. They had found an old farmhouse to hole up in for the night, and after checking for walkers, it had been deemed safe.

T-Dog and Shane were scouting a perimeter around the house when T-Dog heard the sound of wings overhead and went down on the ground.

"T-Dog, what the hell?!" Shane looked from the man on the ground to the small tree they were near and the bird resting on the branch. "Yellow-bellied Sapsucker."

"The fuck did you just call me?!" T-Dog glared up at Shane.

"Not you, idiot; the bird," Shane nodded at the animal in question. "It's a kind of woodpecker, called a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker."

"Is it a scavenger?"

"It's a fuckin' woodpecker, it eats bugs in trees."

"Oh, right," T-Dog got up and brushed himself off. "You, uh, don't have to tell anybody about that, right?"

"Nothin' to tell," Shane shrugged and looked off into the woods, "as far as I could tell, or anybody who could see from the house, you tripped."

"...Thanks, man."

"Though it was kinda funny to see you hit the ground like your ass was on fire and you were tryin' to stop, drop and roll."

"Oh shut up."


	10. itsy bitsy spider

Rick, spiders

* * *

Rick has never liked insects, and he's always been afraid of spiders (not afraid of them like Shane is afraid of bees, though; at least Shane has a reason to break into a sweat and whimper if he sees a stinger with wings, and Rick doesn't have that as an excuse). Lori thought it was a joke when they were dating and he sheepishly asked her if she could swat the spider on the windowsill of his apartment when she'd come over for movie night. When she realized it wasn't a joke, she calmly grabbed a piece of paper and a glass, caught the spider and let it out in the bushes outside of Rick's apartment. He'd known she was the one since then.

He'd tried not to freak out about spiders in front of Carl, and for the most part succeeded. There had been the incident where some mistletoe that had been stored in the basement had hidden a small spider that had fallen and landed in Rick's hair that one Christmastime and Carl had been six and witnessed Rick faint dead away, but other than that, Rick was pretty sure he'd kept a lid on his phobia.

The day before they got to the base, they hit the last small town and in it, a community college that was deserted (no dorms meant no walkers, save for the occasional staff member that thought they'd be safer here than at home). So when they went to clear it, and see if they could rustle up any supplies to make a good-faith offering to the base in case they needed a trump card to be let it, Rick went with Carl to see what they could scavenge. The community college was more of a small university, with multiple two, three and four story buildings. Rick and Carl had gone to the natural science building, hoping to find a store room of supplies.

The fourth room they walked into was the arachnid laboratory, and whoever had been in there last had decided to let the little eight-legged prisoners free. There were webs everywhere, and Rick had pulled Carl out of there and shut the door before finding the nearest trash can and puking.

"Dad?!" Carl looked at him, alarmed.

"Sorry, wasn't prepared to see that," Rick said quietly. He went to a nearby drinking fountain, and finding it still working, rinsed his mouth out.

"But it's just spiderwebs. I didn't see any actual spiders."

"They've probably infested the building, we need to get out of here."

"But Dad, what about the supplies?"

"Safety first, we're getting out of here," Rick's tone said the matter was closed. "Let's go."

"Yes sir," Carl dragged his heels but followed his dad. "You know, I was reading in a book last week that fear of spiders is in the top five greatest fears of all time."

"Is that right," Rick stated.

"It's nothin' to be embarrassed or ashamed of, Dad."

"I'M NOT -" Rick started to yell, then calmed himself. He wasn't going to yell at his son over this, and ushered him outside. "I'm not ashamed, Carl; I just don't like spiders all that much."

"You don't like spiders so much that you'll puke from seein' a room full of spiderwebs," Carl pointed out. "It's okay, Dad; do you want me and you to take another building, and we'll have Shane and T-Dog look in Natural Sciences?"

"No, let's have Glenn and Daryl do this building; they do better with nature than most of us," Rick looked over at the building next to them. "How about we check out the student union, see if there's food in there we can take?"

"Okay," Carl nodded. "And if you see a spider, just say so and I'll squish if for you."

"Okay, deal," Rick gave his son a one-armed hug and they walked into building together.


End file.
